Charlotte MLS pushes back inaugural season. Team to begin play in 2022.
Charlotte’s expansion soccer team will be pushed back a year from January 2021 to 2022, Major League Soccer and Charlotte MLS announced Friday.
In addition to Charlotte, expansion clubs in St. Louis and Sacramento will delay their season debut.
“We have always taken a thoughtful and strategic approach to our expansion planning and have delivered successful launches for every new club,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement. “It is important for each club to take the necessary time to launch their inaugural MLS seasons the way their fans and communities deserve.”
The decision was made by Garber, working with the league’s Expansion Committee, to “provide the club with an additional year to plan for the team’s launch,” a statement from the team said. The additional time should allow Charlotte MLS to host more fans at its Bank of America Stadium home site in 2022 rather than potentially having to reduce capacity next year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Observer reported Thursday that the Carolina Panthers, who play NFL games at Bank of America Stadium, recently told personal seat license holders that seating would be reduced for the 2020 season. The Panthers are owned by the same company that runs Charlotte MLS, Tepper Sports and Entertainment. Bank of America Stadium seats just over 75,000 people.
St. Louis and Sacramento, expansion clubs announced in the second half of 2019 and originally set to start play in 2022, will now launch a year later. However, Austin FC, the expansion club announced in January 2019, about a year before Charlotte’s team, will remain on schedule for a 2021 launch.
The team is still moving forward with club operations, including its official team name and brand reveal Wednesday, its initial Youth Academy training sessions later this month and building its roster throughout the secondary transfer window this summer and fall, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be named since the team hasn’t officially announced the moves.
“After a lot of discussion with Major League Soccer, we are confident it is in the best interest of our club and our supporters to take additional time to ensure a successful inaugural season,” Charlotte MLS president Tom Glick said in a statement. “When we were awarded the team in December, we knew we were on an extremely tight timeline to begin play in 2021, but we were ready to meet that challenge.”
Glick said in the statement that the coronavirus pandemic impacted several of the team’s “essential initiatives.” In an interview with Charlotte MLS’s Tiffany Blackmon, Glick said the team agreed with the league that more time would be beneficial to building a soccer club after the disruption caused by the pandemic.
“This is a club that we are establishing for Charlotte and for North and South Carolina that’s gonna be year round for the next hundred years or more,” Glick said. “And we owe it to everyone involved — our supporters, our partners, the community, to build it right and get it right.”
The team pushed back the release of its team name, logo and colors amid the pandemic and nationwide protests. The name, originally set to be released in June, is scheduled to be announced next Wednesday at 11 a.m. despite the new season schedule. Charlotte MLS has been ruling out possible contenders on its Twitter page. The list of remaining possible names includes All Carolina FC, Carolina Gliders FC, Charlotte Athletic FC, Charlotte Crown FC, Charlotte FC, Charlotte Monarchs FC and Charlotte Town FC.
“It was always gonna be a fast launch,” Glick said of the schedule. “We were ready for that and made big progress, but to have this extra time will benefit us.”
The team also recently signed its first player, Sergio Ruiz, a midfielder who formerly captained Racing Santander in the second Spanish division. Glick said Ruiz would be loaned to another club over the next 18 months. Ruiz was already expected to be loaned out in the leading up to pre-season training with Charlotte MLS.
“It will be a year-and-a-half of firsts, of milestones that should be savored and enjoyed and not rushed,” Glick said. “And I think we now have the opportunity to do that, so we accept it, we’ll embrace it and I think it actually will allow us to build and even stronger club and arrive at our inaugural game and our inaugural season in a really strong place and set ourselves up for long-term success.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Charlotte MLS pushes back inaugural season. Team to begin play in 2022.."
